Scarves are usually made of a long rectangular piece of material that wraps around a wearer's neck. These are used to protect the neck from adverse weather conditions or for decorative purposes. Often, these scarves fall off as a result of normal head and neck motion. Consequently, fasteners or pins are used to keep the scarf wrapped around the neck or the ends are tied together. Tying both ends of the scarf used for cold weather usually result in a bulky knot or sometimes, unattractive knot, due to the thick material from which it is made. Consequently, this knot often gets into the way of the wearer. Additionally, whether it is made from a thick material or not, the amount of tension on the knot changes as the wearer moves around causing, oftentimes, the scarf to loosen and thereby lose its ability to adequately protect the neck. This situation is worsened when the wearer is a child. Children usually are more movable than the adults, they also undo the fasteners, get pricked when attempting to remove the pin, or lose the scarf. They get into their way while playing, running, jumping, etc.
The proposed hooded scarf is a one piece pull over combination of a scarf and hood which covers or protects both the head and the neck, with the scarf or neckpiece adjustable, as desired to protect a portion of the face under the eyes as well as the chest area. To cover a portion of the face, the length or in this case synonymous to the height of the neckpiece because it is oriented upwards, can be varied. It can be of a length/height just enough to cover the neck or it can be lengthened to expand, if desired, to cover the lower face area and nose, consequently, doing away with the need for ear muffs to protect the ears, and mask to protect the nose and mouth from exposure to inclement weather or dust. U.S. Pat. No. 5,802,618 proposes a scarf comprising a neckpiece and a bib or chestpiece. To close the neckpiece, fasteners are usually placed on opposite ends of the lateral edges of the neckpiece. In this scarf, once the fasteners lose or reduces their gripping ability with usage and time such as in a hook and loop fastener, or the fastener falls off like a button or hook, the scarf, likewise, loses its ability to protect the neck. Additionally, there is no proposal to connect this scarf to a hood to protect the head, thereby not providing full protection. U.S. Pat. No. 6,272,690 discloses a head covering which is connected to a mask member and in an alternate design, a scarf extends downwardly from the head member. The head covering does not have the flexibility to have the nose and lower face uncovered at will. U.S. Pat. No. 6,023,787 refers to a hood with a faceguard. The portion covering the neck extends from the hood and includes a faceguard which hangs down from the bottom of the neck portion. To use the faceguard, the neck portion is pulled up into the hood so that the exterior neck portion is turned outside in to align the faceguard with the wearer's face. This hood entails manipulation of the neck portion to cover the nose and mouth which can be cumbersome and time taking, especially for children, for an off and on situation, for example, as one enters or leave a building. Also, when the face guard is used, as the faceguard is turned outside in to cover the face, the covering of the front portion of the neck will necessarily be pulled up causing inadequacy in covering the neck. Another patent, U.S. Pat. No. 5,765,230 proposes a single multifunction head apparel. To provide covering a face mask, similar to '787, the neck opening needs to be involuted to take a portion of the neck covering to cover the face. Like '787, this manipulation is cumbersome and may be additionally difficult especially for children to do which may discourage them to do it at all even if needed. Also, this will necessitate a dual layer covering the mid portion of the face which would impede free breathing, thereby necessitating a gasket for escapement of user's breath. Further, for both '787 and '230, once the neckpiece is involuted to cover the face, it will not be as easy to cover and uncover the head with the hood unless the neck bottom portion is of such length so as to leave a sizeable neck portion still lodging on the shoulders when the neck opening is involuted to cover the face. The latter requires more materials to be used and will be bulkier than the claimed invention
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a one piece hooded scarf that will not fall off even with extensive head and neck motion.
It is also an object of this invention to provide an ear, nose and lower face covering that can be easily put on and off at will.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a one piece pullover hooded scarf without the need of fasteners.
This and other objects of the present invention will become apparent upon further review of the specification and drawing.